20 Paytm Employees Turn Millionaires After Sale of Company Shares

An office boy made Rs 20 lakh by selling his shares.

Employees of Paytm have previously cashed-in on the company’s success by selling their shares.

(Photo: The Quint)

Over 100 former and current Paytm employees became millionaires, as the country’s second largest start-up completed stock sales worth Rs 500 crore, Hindustan Times reported.

This includes Rs 300 crore from the latest secondary sale of shares, which valued the company at $10 billion.

According to HT, around 25-25 people made $1 million – roughly Rs 7 crore – in the latest sale which aimed at rewarding staff. Paytm’s Canada chief executive Harinder Takhar cashed out over Rs 40 crore, or $6.3 million.

An office boy made over Rs 20 lakh in the stock sale, said Paytm on Monday, 29 January, but did not disclose other employee details.

The company’s latest valuation is $3 billion higher than what it was valued at in March 2017, when it raised funds from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.

The secondary sale gave an opportunity to existing and former Paytm employees to liquidate their vested Esop units and create wealth. It also allowed various family offices and few Western long-hold funds to gain entry on the cap table with this round.

Paytm

Softbank, SAIF Partners, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and Ant Financial Services Group are the company’s existing investors.

The company’s Esop pool isn’t restricted to top or mid-level executives, but employees and office staff who have been around (with the company) from early days.

Paytm spokesperson

“There are another 100-150 more employees who are dollar millionaires on paper,” said founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who liquidated 1 percent of his stock last year to raise Rs 325 crore for Paytm’s payments bank business.

Esops are financial instruments that allow employees to own shares which they can sell for cash after a predefined period of time.